I've posted a similar question here before, but the focus was different.

Our projects use some libs (like Spring and Hibernate), for which I'd
like to have the source code linked so I can browse their Javadocs,
improve code assist, etc.

1) If I use "User Libraries" for these libs, each developer will have to
separately download the libraries, unzip to their machines, etc, and
configure their Eclipse to point to them.

2) If I copy the jars to the project's "lib" directory (or WEB-INF/lib,
or similar), the developers don't have to download the libs to make the
project compile, but they won't have access to the lib's sources.

Is there a "mixed" approach, with the best of both choices (having the
Javadocs but not needing to download libs separately) ?

Maven is out of question, I'm currently using it but it causes more
trouble then it's worth.

Well... You can use the WEB-INF/lib approach and then associate javadoc
with entries under Web App Libraries as you would for User Libraries.
Each user will have to do the javadoc association individually since
that setting is stored in workspace metadata that you cannot share.

Konstantin Komissarchik wrote:
> Well... You can use the WEB-INF/lib approach and then associate javadoc
> with entries under Web App Libraries as you would for User Libraries.
> Each user will have to do the javadoc association individually since
> that setting is stored in workspace metadata that you cannot share.